Israeli forces arrest two young children in West Bank for 'spying'

Israeli forces detained two young children in the West Bank city of Hebron on Monday, accusing them of being spies, according to the Palestinian activist group ISM.

Footage shared by Al Jazeera shows people confronting soldiers as they arrested two young boys who are holding hands, both appearing to be primary school age and visibly scared.

"They are children," a man tells one of the soldiers.

The soldier responds: "I don't care."

"It's not a matter of right or wrong, it's a child," the man says, before another tells the person filming the scene to leave.

"The #IOF detained two Palestinian children, accusing them of being spies. When passersby questioned why such young children were detained, the army told them to stop filming," ISM wrote on social media.

Israeli forces are widely notorious for detaining Palestinian children. Thousands of Palestinian minors, some as young as 12, have been detained annually for alleged security offences, often prosecuted in Israeli military courts rather than civilian courts.

Multiple human rights organisations, including Save the Children and Defense for Children International - Palestine (DCIP), have documented widespread reports of physical abuse, torture, solitary confinement, and degrading treatment of these children during arrest and detention.

Also on Tuesday, the Israeli military launched a string of raids across the occupied West Bank.

Troops detained seven Palestinians and stormed into dozens of homes in Kafr Sur, a town south of Tulkarem, in an early-morning raid, the head of the village council told Anadolu.

Raids were also carried out in Nablus, Qalqilya, and the Am'ari refugee camp in Ramallah, which came hours after an Israeli soldier was killed by a Palestinian truck driver near the illegal settlement of Kedumim.

The Israeli military has escalated its attacks against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank since the Hamas-led attack on 7 October 2023.

Tens of thousands of people have been forcibly displaced from refugee camps, while the rate of home demolitions of Palestinian homes has surged.

Israeli forces and illegal settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians and injured more than 10,000 others since October 2023, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

The far-right Israeli government has also accelerated the pace of settlement expansion and has threatened to annex swathes of the territory.

Bezalel Smotrich, Israel's ultranationalist finance minister, last month approved plans to construct the E1 settlement in eastern Jerusalem, a project which would foreclose the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state.

In a landmark decision last July, the International Court of Justice declared that Israel's presence in the West Bank is illegal under international law and ordered it to dismantle settlements and evacuate the territory within six months.